The circulatory system comprises a closed hydraulic circuit that is under pressure and that is internally lined with endothelial cells. The endothelium is subjected continuously to tangential shear stress that is essential to maintaining its physiological function: vascular tonus by synthesizing nitrogen monoxide, blood coagulation, inflammatory response, combating artherosclerosis, immune system, angiogenesis, and apoptosis.
Any pathological alteration of the endothelial function will give rise to malfunction of the system, with consequences that can sometimes be dramatic.
At present, there is no circulatory assistance system in existence that seeks to conserve or to improve this endothelial function.
Cardiac assistance systems are known that are used for replacing heart activity in full or in part during a surgical operation or in order to restore said activity when the heart has stopped or is too weak. Such systems are mostly invasive systems, requiring either a tool to be inserted into a subject's body, said tool subsequently being used to create pulsations, or a blood sampling in the subject and treating the blood sample in a voluminous machine outside the body, followed by injecting the blood back into the subject's body. Under all circumstances, present systems are expensive and complicated to implement, since they require action to be taken by specialists. Furthermore, those systems can only be implemented on dedicated sites such as medical sites, and under the supervision of qualified people.
Furthermore, existing systems having a complex architecture, which makes such systems expensive to manufacture.
Furthermore, present systems serve for taking general action on the subject's body, generally on the subject's heart, and they are not suitable for acting on different portions of a subject's body, such as for example, the legs, the hands, the face, etc.
Thus, at present, no circulatory assistance system exists, that is non-invasive, and that is intended to preserve the endothelial function or to improve said function when it has deteriorated.